The installed cost of US solar power has fallen quarter by quarter for the past three years, putting them on course for an ambitious 2020 target, show the world’s most comprehensive cost data.

Installed costs fell 27% in the first three months of this year alone, compared with the corresponding quarter last year, shows an RTCC analysis.

The country is on track to achieve a very ambitious target, set by the previous administration under US President Barack Obama, to slash solar costs by the end of the decade, under a so-called “SunShot Initiative”.

Costs for all installations, regardless of size, averaged some $3.3 per watt installed this year to date, across 40 installations.

WASHINGTON -- The growth of wind power in the United States is putting a significant dent in emissions, according to a forthcoming report from the American Wind Energy Association. Wind generation avoided 95.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2013, which is equivalent to taking 16.9 million cars off the road.

That's a 4.4 percent cut to power sector emissions, when compared to the level of emissions that would have been generated if that power had come from fossil fuels. Wind proponents say that's evidence that the wind industry is playing a major role in meeting U.S. emissions goals. "Every time a megawatt of wind power is generated, something else is not generated," said Elizabeth Salerno, AWEA's vice president for industry data and analysis.

There are now 61,000 megawatts of wind power installed in the U.S., with turbines in 39 states. Another 12,000 megawatts of wind power are currently under construction, and power projects for which contracts are signed but construction has yet to start are expected to produce another 5,200 megawatts. AWEA says those additional projects should cut another 1 percent of power sector emissions, putting the country closer to the Obama administration's goal of cutting total U.S. emissions 17 percent by 2020.

The switch to natural gas for power generation, spurred by lower prices in recent years, is usually given most of the credit for reductions in emissions from the power sector over the last nine years. But plants now burning gas could switch back to coal if prices go back up, said Salerno, so "those aren't fixed, permanent reductions." With wind, she says, "those reductions are locked in."

Supporters of solar energy put on yellow t-shirts Wednesday outside of the Public Utility Commissions offices in Hallowell before a hearing for Central Maine Power’s request for a rate increase. About two dozen people attended the gathering.
yellow “Solar for ME” T-shirts handed out by members of out-of-state advocacy groups before filing into the building for the public hearing on the proposed changes.

Advocates and users of renewable energy – from homeowners with solar panels to larger institutions such as private colleges – have objected to a part of Central Maine Power Co.’s proposed new rate plan that would levy a charge for customers who generate their own power.

CMP also is trying to raise the fixed monthly fees it charges residential and small-business customers, while lowering the variable price.

Is the Green Mountain state about to become the green power state? As the battle over net metering policy is being fought in state legislatures across America, one small state has given solar advocates a big win – Vermont.

Governor Peter Shumlin signed legislation into law yesterday that will nearly quadruple the net metering cap utilities have been using, from 4% to 15% of peak load. The bill enjoyed bipartisan support, passing 136-8 in the state house and unanimously in the state senate.

Vermont may rank among the middle of the pack in America’s solar industry, but the new law is a significant validation of the value of solar energy for consumers and the overall economy, and shows utilities can work with distributed generation without falling into the “death spiral” fueling so many state-level fights.

The new cap means retail electric customers will now be compensated for sending solar energy they don’t consume back onto the grid, up until net metering payments surpass 15% of peak demand from the previous year or from 1996, whichever amount is greater. Vermont currently has 3,600 net metering projects.

Once all its costs are accounted for, the price of commercial solar power has pulled even with retail electricity rates in Italy and Germany, according to a new report.

The analysis is the third installment in a regular report by the consulting firm Eclareon, done on behalf of an international group of sustainable energy interests. This installment was also the first to look at solar power in the commercial sector rather than the residential sector. It looked at a standard 30 kilowatt solar photovoltaic system for your average commercial building, and the built a methodology to assess its “leveled cost of energy” (LCOE) in seven different countries: Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Spain.

The LCOE of any source of power — solar, natural gas, coal, wind, etc — accounts for everything that goes into determining that electricity’s cost: installation, maintenance, investment, the electricity itself, depreciation, and so forth. The goal is to give a more complete picture of each power source’s economic position vis-a-vis its rivals.

According to Eclareon’s analysis, solar’s LCOE in Italy and Germany is now at “grid parity,” meaning it’s even with retail electricity prices in general in those countries. Spain’s already gotten there as well, and Mexico and France are coming up.

A proposed $250 million distributed solar project appears to have held its own in a Minnesota regulatory process that put it in competition with three natural gas options.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Thursday ordered Xcel Energy to pursue a power-purchase agreement with a Twin Cities solar developer to meet part of its projected generation shortfall later this decade.

Geronimo Energy’s 100 megawatt solar proposal will be paired with one or more natural gas projects, to be determined later, to provide up to 500 megawatts of new generation Xcel expects to need by 2019.

Capacity factor, as many EarthTechling readers know, is a measure of how much energy a generator produces over a period of time as a percentage of the maximum it could produce. So you take the total amount of energy produced in, say, a year, and divide by the amount of power the generator would produce had it run continuously at 100 percent.

Wind power capacity factors vary considerably by site, but generally people think around 30 to 35 percent when they talk about capacity factors for wind. But in Denmark in 2013, 13 offshore wind farms, totaling installed capacity of 1,271 megawatts, together had a capacity factor of 42.7 percent.

2013 marked many records for the expansion of wind energy in Denmark. At year end, more than 33% of Danish electricity was supplied from wind turbines and 656 new MW were connected to the electricity grid - of which 307 MW were land-based.

The share of wind power in the Danish electricity grid reached roughly a third of the total Danish electricity consumption in 2013 (33,2%).

This marks an increase of 3,12 percentage points, which is the second-largest ever recorded in Denmark, only surpassed by a 6,27 percentage point increase in 2011.

Measured in terms of megawatt, 2013 surpassed all previous years with a net increase of 609 MW, excluding older dismantled turbines, bringing the total Danish wind capacity to 4,772 MW at year end:

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, Feb. 18, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hydrogenics Corporation(Nasdaq:HYGS) (TSX:HYG), a leading developer and manufacturer of hydrogen generation and hydrogen-based power modules, today announced that it will be a participating partner of the Power-to-Gas Biological Catalysis ("BioCat") Project in Denmark. The "BioCat" installation will use hydrogen made ​​from excess wind power to convert biogas from sewage sludge into cleaner methane gas. This new Danish energy project will illustrate how future energy systems can be better integrated.

The "BioCat" project has received 27.6 million DKK (€3.7 million) in funding from the Danish research pool ForskEL. The consortium is led by Electrochaea, a developer of methanation technologies for Power-to-Gas applications, and the Danish transmission system operator for power and gas, Energinet. Other partners in the BioCat consortium include Hydrogenics, Audi, NEAS Energy, HMN Gashandal, Spildevandscenter Avedore, and Insero Business Services.

For this project, Hydrogenics will install a 1 MW water electrolysis plant in Spildevandscenter Avedøre, one of the largest wastewater treatment facilities in Denmark. The site will use surplus electricity from the grid to produce hydrogen using Hydrogenics' electrolyzer, and the hydrogen will then be combined with carbon dioxide from raw biogas and fed into a separate bioreactor - in which microorganisms will perform a catalytic reaction to produce pipeline-grade renewable methane. The facility will be operated in different modes to demonstrate its ability to produce methane under dynamic operations, including while providing ancillary services to the electricity grid. The product gas will be injected into a nearby gas distribution system, and the by-products - oxygen and heat - will be recycled onsite in the wastewater treatment process. The biomethanation technology was developed by Electrochaea.

The 1 MW electrolyzer from Hydrogenics will contribute to electricity balancing through the services of NEAS Energy, thus ensuring optimal use of available wind power and demonstrating the full potential of electrolysis for grid management and regulation. The upgraded methane will be supplied to the local gas distribution system and traded by HMN Gashandel, a Danish energy service and gas distribution company managing gas grids, biogas upgrading plants, and grid injection facilities.